


Loss of Light

by destielsuperwholockbandhoorah



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Destiel - Freeform, major angst, no happy ending, not exactly major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 02:36:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3233096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destielsuperwholockbandhoorah/pseuds/destielsuperwholockbandhoorah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you meet your soul mate, you begin to see color. But what happens when you lose them? </p><p>Dean gets a shock one day when he is walking down the street.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss of Light

When it happened, Dean felt it like being hit by a truck. The air was knocked out of him and the world pushed in on him. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t see.   
But he could see. That was the problem. The world he had known for so long had fallen away, leaving him to trip and stumble and flounder in confusion, a sharp sense of loss already stabbing through his stomach before he was even conscious of what was really going on. Everything had changed in an instant, darkly and horribly taking away the world and the sky Dean had been looking at. Where was the sky? Was it falling? And where had all the bright sunlight gone?  
There was a sharp pain in his knees that he ignored, he barely noticed it as his vision swam and the world spun around him. He was lightheaded and dizzy and he couldn’t breathe. And after the initial shock, understanding flowed over him and threatened to drown him and tear him apart. Because feeling this, seeing this, and understanding was so much worse, so awfully horribly wrong that Dean was sure his heart stopped beating and there was nothing left of him or the world.  
His lungs and eyes burned, and he managed to choke out one word, “Cas,” at the sky that had once been blue.  
He felt everything around him crumbling, falling from the beauty that had once been everywhere to a pie of broken gray pieces under him.  
He slowly became a little more aware of himself, as the shock of what had just happened numbed him. He was on his knees on the sidewalk, with his head cupped in his hands and his eyes squeezed shut, in the position he had fallen to after the realization.  
But even with closed eyes, the world looked wrong. The colors behind his eyes that usually were hinted out in the blackness, were gone. Everything was gone and all he could see was a flat gray and black lifeless expanse, with his eyes open or shut. So he opened them, felling like he would rather see the loss of color around him than the loss of light within himself.  
There were people around him, he now realized, and a concerned murmur buzzed on all sides. There was a hand on his back, which he shook off as soon as he realized it was there, banging his knees into the ground as he scrambled to his feet, unsteady but not wanting to be vulnerable. Dean had always hated that feeling, and there was enough rawness and pain coursing through him that he couldn’t’ let anyone touch him.   
Don’t touch me don’t come near me don’t look at me! His panicked brain shouted at the world, though nothing more than a small noise of pain escaped his mouth.  
He looked around the ring of concerned faces, hating them, until one something snagged his eye. It was so unexpected, yet should have been so ordinary. It would have been ordinary before. But then, it was something so entirely out of place that he stood rooted to the spot, forgetting the world around him and focusing everything on that one place.  
Red.  
It was red. It was barely there, faded and hardly a color, but as he stared at the woman’s scarf, he was sure of what he saw. There was a little splash of color in the world, at least there, and that meant he had a chance.  
Cas was alive. There was life in that small faded red scarf, and clung to it with his entire being, the hope feeling strange mixed with the still cold pit of dread inside of him. He took a small step forward but held himself back.  
Cas.  
He needed to find Cas.  
He spun around and began walking quickly, shoving through the surprised people, ignoring their words they called after him, asking him if he was alright, telling him to wait. He pulled out his phone and called Sam. Sam was responsible, he would know what happened, Dean hoped.  
Sam picked up and before he could say anything, Dean interrupted him. “Do you know where Cas is?” he asked urgently, still making his way back to his car.  
“What?” Sam’s voice came through the phone, and he sounded confused. “What do you mean, what’s wrong, Dean?”  
Dean grit his teeth. Sam didn’t know. “Everything,” he spat unhelpfully, and hung up on his brother. He got in his car and began to drive. Where, he didn’t know.   
His phone rang, and he glanced at it, expecting an angry call from Sam admonishing him as to proper behavior on the phone, but it was an unknown number and so with a sigh and a funny feeling in his gut, he picked it up. “Hello?” Dean asked, gripping tightly at the wheel and trying not to notice the grey of the world. There were flashes color everywhere, faded and dim, but that was still awful to see, and he was shutting down his brain from everything that wasn’t Cas (well and driving).  
A voice on the other end cleared its throat, and then spoke, their voice clipped and clinical and a little cold. They sounded tired. “Is this Dean Winchester?”  
“Yeah.” He turned a corner, realizing he was on his way home, and shifted unhappily in his seat.  
“Well,” the person on the other side of the phone sniffed. “This number was listed as an emergency contact for a mister Castiel Novak, and I am calling to inform you…” Dean lost the rest of the man’s words for a moment and was thankful that there was no one on the road around him. He slammed on the breaks, not trusting himself to drive right then.  
“… General hospital,” the man finished, then didn’t speak, as if waiting for Dean.  
Dean swallowed the lump in his throat after a few attempts, but managed to reply in a choked voice, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”  
A note of sympathy crept into the man’s voice. “Alright. He’s in the ICU at the moment, but he’ll be allowed visitors soon.”  
“Alright, thank you,” Dean replied hollowly.  
Dean swallowed again as the phone clicked, and didn’t move for a moment.  
He jumped a little as he realized he was wasting time sitting there in shock, and quickly started up the car again, turning it around and heading towards the hospital that the man had told him Cas was at. It was then that his phone rang again, and with a curse, Dean answered it.  
“What do you want Sam,” he almost growled, knowing he would regret being like this later but not really caring. He had to get to Cas and didn’t want anything slowing him down.  
“What’s wrong with you Dean?” Sam said, a little angry, a little hurt.  
“Cas,” was all he managed, and as his voice broke, Sam seemed to understand. He was always good at that, understanding the little that Dean gave him to work with.  
“Where are you?” Sam asked quietly, in a voice that Dean would have made fun of him for at any other time, but that he couldn’t care less about right now.  
Dean told him, and Sam hung up after a quick promise that he and Jess would be there as soon as they could. Dean couldn’t bring himself to answer his brother, but felt the knot in his heart loosen slightly at the small reassurance.  
He pulled his baby quickly but carefully into a parking space, and hurried, almost ran, up the steps of the hospital and into the lobby.  
“I need Castiel Novak,” he said quickly, out of breath, to the woman behind the desk.  
She looked up at him, face a carefully composed mask built from dealing with countless desperate people like him. He knew it was her job but it pissed him off. It was like she didn’t understand how important this was.  
She pursed her lips. “Name?”  
“Dean Winchester. Can you tell me what happened?”  
She hummed and clicked through her computer. “He can’t have visitors right now, sir, you’re going to have to wait. And,” she bit her lip, “there’s no record of what happened yet. I’m sorry. He saw a little apologetic look on her face, and forgave her internally. With a curt nod, he turned around and sank down into one of the chairs in the waiting room.  
Dean let out a shaky breath and clenched his jaw to keep the pained noises in. He would not let himself cry. Not here, not now, because Cas was alive and he would be okay. He had to be okay. He looked down at his hands, they were flat and gray, none of the colors in him enough to be seen. It fir though, how he felt. He felt flat and gray and empty, devoid of life and of any feeling except the ice cold daggers twisting in his gut, ones of pain and fear and dread and worry.  
He wondered if he would be able to see the red of blood like this. Probably. He imagined it for a moment, red blood next to blue eyes, splattered across light skin-   
He threw the though away hurriedly, and buried his face in his shaking hands.   
There was a red string stuck to his shoe. He focused on that, not letting himself see anything except that little sliver of life. It was like a thin line of blood, a vein, or a small thin pencil line. He filled his mind with different images, trying to drown out thoughts of anything else. He remembered a story he had heard once, long ago, about people being connected to others by a red string of fate. The strings never broke, no matter how much they were stretched or tangled, and kept two people linked forever. Destinies intertwined. Dean almost smiled at that, imagining him and Cas linked together by the little red string stuck to his shoe.  
He wasn’t sure how long it had been by the time he felt a hand settle lightly on his back. But as it did, he jerked up into a sitting position, pulling away and turning with a wild eyed glare at whoever had touched him.  
And he was met with a pair of familiar eyes. He let out a sigh and relaxed a little as Jess gave him a concerned smile.  
“Hey, Dean,” Sam said from behind her, a painful look of sympathy in his eyes.  
Dean just nodded and rubbed his face shakily, not trusting his voice.  
Sam understood what was going on and decided to let his brother be, if just for the moment. He sat down, so that Jess was in between him and his brother, and held her hand. The three of them sat in silence for a while, before Dean spoke, hardly knowing why.  
“Almost all the color is gone. It wavers sometimes.” Sam and Jess were silent, letting him speak. He continued, his voice a little shaky, “I almost saw blue a moment ago, that color,” he swallowed, “it’s the hardest. There’s a little bit but,” his voice broke at the end, and he faded into silence, head still in his hands.  
He never looked away from the string again in that time, preferring to focus on it more than anything else. There was a tick of a clock in the room too, but he ignored that, not wanting to imagine it ticking away Cas’s life.  
He wasn’t sure what he was seeing until he heard his name being spoken. He blinked at the floor. That was blue, a washed out color for sure, but it was there and not going away.  
“Dean,” it was his brother’s voice now, and Dean lifted his head to look around the room.  
The woman behind the desk was looking at them, and once she had eye contact with Dean, she spoke. “Castiel Novak is allowed a visitor.” She glanced at Sam and Jess, “Just one though.”  
Dean stood quickly, a little too quickly, as the blood rushed to his head and he was dizzy. Spots danced in his vision and he saw black for a moment, but he couldn’t care less because there was color in the spots. Barely, but it was there, and he had to hold down his hope for fear of it breaking him.  
His vision cleared, Dean glanced at the worried expression of his brother and his sister in law, and nodded at them, trying to tell them he was alright. Then he approached the desk, signed in, and was told where to go.  
His legs shook under him as he was lead down a hallway and to a door. But he clenched his hands, digging his fingers into his palms to keep them steady, ignoring the marks he knew he would have later.  
And as he entered the room, he thought he might collapse. He held himself up though, sagging slightly against a chair as he looked down at the dark haired form under the stark sheets.  
“Do you know what happened?” the voice from behind him surprised Dean, and he turned to see the nurse looking at him, her eyebrows scrunched with worry. She was a kindly looking older woman, and Dean didn’t find her worry insulting, like he might have with someone else.  
He shook his head, and the woman sighed.  
“There was a bit of an accident.”  
Dean pursed his lips at the apparent euphemism.  
“Bit sad really,” she said, as she checked the machines hooked up to Cas. “Poor boy tripped and cracked his head on the pavement. Doesn’t sound bad but it seems he hit it just wrong. There’s a crack in his skull and some internal swelling that they’re working on reducing. He’s better that he was.”  
She patted Cas’s arm lightly before turning around and examining Dean’s face.  
He felt a little sick, and hadn’t moved. He felt like his face was frozen, and watched the woman carefully.  
She nodded a little, then walked out past him. “I’ll let you two be,” she said softly as she brushed past him, leaving him with a light reassuring squeeze on the arm. The door closed quietly after her and Dean looked down at Castiel.  
“Hey Cas,” he choked out, finally feeling the tears spill over and make tracks down his cheeks. There as a small strangled sob as he sank down into the chair, knowing he wouldn’t stay standing much longer. He picked up Cas’s hand where it lay on the sheets, not giving a damn about the cheesiness, just needing to touch him. It might have been his imagination, but the colors strengthened infinitesimally as he touched his soul mate.  
“You idiot,” he half laughed, half sobbed. “You were always not paying attention to your feet. I kept telling you would fall one day when I wasn’t there to catch you.” He grit his teeth against the sounds that wanted out, and barely got the words out.  
He held Cas’s too cold hand in his, absently rubbing warmth back into it, and let his head fall forward, looking at the string on his shoe again. On an impulse, he let go of Cas with one hand momentarily, and bent down to retrieve the little string.  
He came back up and twisted it around in his fingers for a moment before laying Cas’s hand down and tying the string around Cas’s little finger, the only one it would fit around. His hands barely could do it, clumsy and shaky, but he managed to get it on, not too tight, but secure.  
He looked at it, the little thin line of red contrasting with Cas’s now pale skin, and felt new tears. Cas had it now, their string in a way, the life Dean had clung to when he had nothing else. He had given it to class. Cas needed all he could get, after all.  
“Love you Cas,” Dean whispered, holding Cas’s hand, and letting out a shaky, pained, sort of laugh. They stayed like that for a while.  
Next part   
Dean faded into a sort of restless daze. It wasn’t sleep, but he wasn’t fully conscious either. They told him to leave after what might have been a few hours, and he resisted for a moment, but he knew that was useless and let himself be led out of the room, back to where Sam and Jess were miraculously still waiting.  
He didn’t want to leave Cas, didn’t want to let him go for even a brief moment, definitely not until they next told him that he could visit his soul mate. He felt the ache in his chest as they were separated, and imagined the world was duller after Cas’s hand slipped from his own. He glanced back though, and was reassured the tiniest bit by the sliver of red tied securely around Cas’s finger.  
There was life there and hope, and he couldn’t let it go. He wouldn’t let go if it killed him.  
Sam and Jess sat talking quietly, holding matching paper cups of the awful watery hospital waiting room coffee, and they glanced up as he entered the room. Dean knew they noted his face immediately. The tears had dried a little bit ago, after he finally managed to get himself under control. But he knew his eyes were still red and there might have been tear tracks on his face. But he couldn’t find it in himself to give a damn.  
“I need some of that, “he croaked, coming up to the couple and gesturing at the coffee.  
“I’ll get you some,” Sam said quickly, and though Dean might have been annoyed with his little brother for something like that under different circumstances, he just sat down heavily in the chair where he had been before and leaned his head back against the wall. And he accepted the coffee from Sam tiredly and gratefully, sipping the scalding liquid and closing his eyes to the world.

 

Sam and Jess tried to convince him to come with them, he couldn’t just stay at the hospital, and they just barely won, after Sam threatened to drag his big brother home by force. So it was grudgingly that Dean let himself be taken home with Sam and Jess, curling up in their guest bedroom and refusing dinner.  
Sam let him be, even though he knew he shouldn’t because he was just so tired, and he could barely imagine what Dean was going through. So he carefully closed the door and drove Dean to the hospital early the next morning, as soon as visiting was allowed. Jess stayed home this time, but Sam stayed in the waiting room as Dean made his way to Cas’s room on still unsteady legs.  
The colors were stronger today, which let Dean relax. But he wouldn’t be alright until Cas was awake and home and well. The world was still wrong.   
He sat down in the same place he had been in before, and picked up Cas’s hand. He looked at the string. It was still there, and strong and red. Dean let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.   
He began to talk to Cas, quietly, not really caring what he said, and played gently with Cas’s fingers. He began to tell him why he loved him, baring himself little piece by piece, in a way he hadn’t before. He faded off after a while, and simply sat there, watching Cas’s face, watching every little shift as he breathed, watching every twitch of his expression. So when something changed, Dean saw it immediately and leaned forward, letting Cas’s hand go in favor of resting his hand on Cas’s shoulder.   
Cas’s eyes squeezed together a moment before blinking open and squinting at the light in the room. He glanced down at the pressure on his arm, following the arm with sleepy eyes up to Dean’s face, who waited silently with a hopeful expression.   
“What-?” Cas’s voice was rough and groggy, and he coughed a little, holding his head a little as if it hurt, which it probably did. He tried again, though not before shifting away so that Dean’s hand fell away. Dean didn’t move. “What are you doing here?”  
“What?” Dean leaned back ever so slightly, trying to understand the confusion in Cas’s face. “Of course I’m here. Why wouldn’t I be?”  
“But,” Cas shook his head a little on the pillow and stared over at Dean with a look of unease, “I don’t know you?”  
Dean couldn’t move. And for the second time in two days, his world broke around him. He thought he made some sort of choked sound, and Cas looked at him with a scared expression.  
Cas didn’t know him, he was afraid of him, and Dean felt his heart stutter, in all the wrong ways. But there was still something to hang onto. The colors.  
He looked into Cas’s eyes, like he had the first time a few years ago when they had met, and both seen the color of the world for the first time.  
Cas’s eyes were a pale blue, the wrong blue, but blue nonetheless. But if Cas was okay, why weren’t the colors back?  
Of course, though. Cas wasn’t okay. He was barely Cas anymore.  
Cas had sat up, with one hand on his head and a confused look on his face that was slowly changing to something worse as they did nothing.  
“Do you see the color?” Dean asked weakly, suddenly feeling every bit of energy drained from him, and it took all he had to stay sitting.  
Cas raised his eyebrows. “Of course not,” he answered tentatively.   
“You don’t,” Dean tried to not gasp, the bottom of the world dropping out from under him.   
Cas shook his head, a look on his face like Dean shouldn’t be surprised. “Would you, um, leave please?” Cas said a little shakily. “I don’t know you and I’d rather my family was here.”  
And somehow that hurt him more deeply, knowing that Cas no longer thought of him as family.   
He remembered that first time Cas had looked at him with a little laugh and said, “well of course Dean, you’re family.” And he had leaned forward and kissed him. Dean wished more than anything that he could kiss Cas again. Or even hold him close, or hold his hand. But people didn’t tend to take kindly to the touch of a stranger. And that’s all he was now.  
But then something Cas had said registered. “Don’t you remember?” Dean asked.  
“What?”  
Dean gulped. He figured he would try to explain. “What do you remember?”  
“What?!” Cas seemed almost angry now, and Dean wondered what he would do.   
“What date is the last you remember?” Dean tried again. And felt the punch to his gut when Cas told him a date over a year before the two of them had ever met. Four years lost nearly.  
“Well, I think that’s it,” Cas said a little nervously. “It’s a little fuzzy.” And after a moment of looking at Dean’s expression, he asked, “Are you alright?”  
Dean let out a small bitter laugh. “You lost nearly four years, Cas.”  
Cas’s face went blank as he took that in. “What?” he said again, this time small and a little dangerously.  
Dean pulled his phone out of his pocket and wordlessly showed Cas the date displayed on it.  
Cas stared at it in disbelief for a few moments. Then he looked like he thought of something. “You called me Cas? Do I know you or something?”  
Dean did not entirely succeed in making the sob sound like another laugh. But though his eyes burned he held in the tears.  
He couldn’t look into those too pale eyes anymore. Dean dropped his gaze to the red string on Cas’s finger. That was still painful but he could bear it. “I know you said you don’t see colors, but,” Dean had to stop so he didn’t break, “I still do.”  
Cas said nothing, and Dean could feel his gaze on him, though he couldn’t tell what Cas was feeling without looking at him. But he just couldn’t look. Not yet.  
“And,” Dean continued, his voice shaking, “You don’t remember the last four years but I do. I remember when I met you. I remember first telling you I loved you.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I remember holding you as you cried at your parents’ funeral and I remember and I remember dancing with you at my brother’s wedding. I remember every bit of you, Cas, and I can still see your blue eyes. They were the first things I saw you know, the first color.”   
He forced himself to look up, to gaze into the eyes he had looked into so many times before, and felt his heart being torn as they looked back without recognition, only shock. Cas was silent, a film of tears in his eyes. But they weren’t for Dean, Dean was sure.   
Then, he figured, what the hell, everything had gone to shit anyways so he might as well. He reached in his pocket.  
He heard the tiniest gasp from Cas as he looked at the thing in his hands.  
“I was going to give this to you today.” Dean admitted quietly.  
And there was not a sound as he twirled the little ring box around in his fingers a moment more. “If only I hadn’t waited so long.” Dean smirked painfully. “Or then again maybe it was better I didn’t.” With a heavy sigh, he put the box carefully back in his pocket, and stared at the ground a little longer.  
As they both continued to say nothing, Cas looked away, down at his hands, and Dean stood up, unable to bear it anymore.  
He left without a word from either of them. Cas never looked up and Dean never looked back this time. He walked quickly, unfeelingly back to the waiting room, knowing he had to get out of there. He couldn’t be there anymore. Not like this. Sam looked up from a book in surprise as Dean approached him, and his expression turned to one of alarm as he took in Dean’s face.  
“Dean, what’s happened?” he asked urgently. He stood as Dean didn’t answer him. “Dean?!”  
Dean shook his head. “I can’t Sam,” his voice broke again. “I can’t be here anymore.”  
Sam wanted to push him, but knew his brother’s “talk to me and I’ll punch your lights out” face, and left it for then. He figured Jess would likely get it out of him.  
So he gathered his stuff, signed Dean out, and drove the two of them to his house.  
Dean disappeared in the room again, without a word to either of them. Sam wasn’t sure he had eaten in the last two days, and set some food by his door, to give Dean a chance.  
Dean was broken. He felt awful for leaving like that, but he felt as if there was no turning back. Cas was no longer his, was he? Dean’s Cas had been erased, cut out, eradicated. The color and life had been sucked out of that Cas, and only leaving Dean with a faded and washed out world. It was somehow worse now like this, knowing Cas was alive and well, but being stuck with half color instead of nothing, while he knew Cas had no recollection of anything between them, and not a hint of color.  
Apparently Sam had called the hospital and been told about Cas’s memory loss and loss of color, as the next day he stood outside of Dean’s room.  
“You can’t give up because he lost his memory, Dean. There’s still a chance, right? Please don’t give up.”  
He left but the words stewed inside Dean, until part of the way through the day, Sam and Jess were startled as Dean strode past them, on his way outside.  
“Dean!” Sam jumped up to follow his brother, but was stopped as Dean turned around, glare somehow made more powerful by the despair and grief in it.  
“Don’t,” Dean said quietly. And then turned again and left, leaving a wordless and forlorn brother in his wake.

 

Dean passed right by the desk in the hospital, and was not noticed by anyone. He was glad, that would only have made this worse. He found Cas’s room easily, but ground to a halt as soon as he entered the room.  
It was empty.  
There was no patient in the bed at least. The nurse from before was making the bed with fresh sheets. She turned at the sound of Dean entering.  
“Oh dear,” she scrunched her eyebrows. “Didn’t they tell you at the front desk? Your Cas was signed out by some family. Older brother, I believe it was?”  
Michael, it must have been, Dean realized, and felt his determination fade away. Michael always hated Dean, and if he had Cas now…  
The hope drained from him once again, and he felt as if he should no longer have a heart from all the times it had been broken and battered.  
“Hmm, what’s this?” the woman mused to herself, ignoring Dean again. He watched as she bent over and picked something off the bedside table.  
It was something small and thin and red.  
On her way out the door, she didn’t brush against him again, she pretended he wasn’t even there, it would seem. And on her way out, she dropped something in the trashcan.  
A small red string, knotted and broken.  
And once more Dean sunk to his knees, finally letting out all the sobs from before. They fell dead and without echo into the small, empty starch white room.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me any tags I should add. Thanks for reading.


End file.
